Eva Chen

Agent-supported negotiations in the e-marketplace

A key requirement for customer-oriented e-marketplaces is the personalisation and customisation of products and services, as well as personalised fulfilment. Negotiations are at the core of these processes. In this paper an e-marketplace, eAgora, is discussed. It allows buyers and sellers to engage in multi-issue negotiations. eAgora implements several protocols based on a negotiation phase model constructed for this system. Its services include a software agent that generates and critiques offers. Based on a small-scale usability testing with participants, who conducted negotiations with and without the agent, the agents services were found useful. The users also requested additional agents services including enhanced offer critique and partial negotiation automation.

On Comparison of Mechanisms of Economic and Social Exchanges: The Times Model

An e-market system is a concrete implementation of a market institution; it embeds one or more exchange mechanisms. E-market systems are also information systems which are information and communication technologies artifacts. This work puts forward an argument that the study of e-markets must incorporate both the behavioral economics as well as the information systems perspectives. To this end the paper proposes a conceptual framework that integrates the two. This framework is used to formulate a model, which incorporates the essential features of exchange mechanisms, as well as their implementations as is artefacts. The focus of attention is on two classes of mechanisms, namely auctions and negotiations. They both may serve the same purpose and their various types have been embedded in many e-market systems.

Experimental Assessment of Agent-Supported Electronic Negotiations

This article presents the results of experimental evaluation of the effectiveness of agent support in e-negotiations. The agent-enhanced e-negotiation system eAgora has been used in the experiments. The system features an agent that assists the user in generating candidate offers, evaluating and critiquing incoming offers, and critiquing counteroffers. The work investigates the effects of agent support and task complexity on negotiation performance and perceived measures of usefulness, satisfaction, ease of use, and confidence. Overall, the results support the expectation that use of an agent leads to higher level of negotiation effectiveness, in particular for higher complexity tasks.

A Study on Preference Impartation and Decision Support in E-Negotiation

Decision support and the impartation of the principals preferences to the agent may influence the negotiation outcome. A multi-attribute two-party contract e-negotiation was conducted in a controlled laboratory environment. The results indicate that the effectiveness of analytical support depends on the elicitation of the numerical preference values. When preference information is transmitted in qualitative terms to the negotiation agents, analytical support may be counterproductive.